Construction of the Mayan station of Uman, in Uman in Yucatan, Mexico, August 31, 2023 (AFP/Rodrigo Oropeza)
A first section of the Maya train, a flagship project of President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador, was inaugurated on Friday in the Yucatán peninsula with the promise of developing one of the poorest regions of Mexico, despite opposition from defenders of the environment.
During the ceremony Mr. Lopez Obrador unveiled a plaque at the train station of the colonial city of Campeche, in the presence of Defense Secretary Luis Cresencio Sandoval. He then boarded one of the carriages of the white and green train, which will be guarded by some 3,000 members of the National Guard.
“This is a great work” which was built “in record time”, the Mexican president welcomed in the morning during his usual daily conference.
Inauguration of the Maya train in Mexico (AFP/Gustavo IZUS, Gabriela VAZ)
This first section of 473 km connects the city of Campeche and the seaside resort of Cancun, the country’s main tourist destination with 34 million foreign visitors between January and October, according to official figures.
This is the first of seven sections of this colossal project which will cover a total of 1,554 km around the Yucatán Peninsula, a region rich in flora, fauna and archaeological ruins. The other sections should be operational in the first quarter of 2024.
This inauguration comes six months before the presidential election, for which, according to polls, the left is favored with the candidacy of the former mayor of Mexico City Claudia Sheinbaum, who will face the former opposition senator Xochitl Galvez.
The train, whose wagons were built by the French group Alstom at its factory in central Mexico, Ciudad Sahagun, represents one of the main infrastructure projects of Mr. Lopez Obrador’s government.
Mexico’s first left-wing president says the project, which in a second phase will include freight wagons, will boost the economy of the country’s southeast, a region lagging behind the industrialized north, on the border of UNITED STATES.
Construction of the Mayan station of Uman, in Uman in Yucatan, Mexico, August 31, 2023 (AFP/Archives/Rodrigo Oropeza)
Environmental defenders, however, believe that the project damages the region’s ecosystem and in particular the cenotes, these networks of underground fresh water wells of great historical and tourist value.
The government had initially planned a budget of nearly nine billion dollars for this project, which began five years ago, but the Mexican Competitiveness Institute (IMCO) estimates that it has risen to $30 billion.
© 2023 AFP
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